


puny human (mine)

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, First Time, Future Fic, Insecurity, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 16:04:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9279182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Written for the Johnson and Coulson fanworks exchange: Prompt = "Maybe after a particularly rough mission, Coulson is feeling a little uncharacteristically insecure about being just a puny human."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BrilliantlyHorrid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrilliantlyHorrid/gifts).



He sent his request pretty late in the day, and she was out on a not-really-mission of PR nature, he hoped this meant she would have to wait until morning to react, and not just come barge into his bunk.

But that hope disappears as he watches Daisy come barge in into his bunk.

“What does this mean?”

She shows him his own request on the tablet.

“I think it’s pretty clear,” he tells him.

He is sitting on his bed, unconsciously waiting for her. Daisy is standing in front of him, and getting close, as if she is trying to be menacing. Well, it’s working. She seems to tower over him for a moment. 

“You want to be taken off field missions?” she asks.

“I believe the request is pretty clear on-”

“Why?” she asks, too. He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. “Is it because of what happened last week? Because you got hurt?”

He makes a distasteful face. He doesn’t like how the word “hurt” sounded just now, like he is a kid; like he is a kid and scratched his knee.

“I was unconscious for three hours,” he reminds her. That’s not the important part. The important part is that he let the suspect go - because the suspect, an enhanced individual, knocked him out. For three hours.

Daisy’s expression softens. She looks at the bed, like she wants to sit besides him, but she doesn’t.

“Hey, if you need some time off because you’re shaken-”

He almost smiles. Daisy is a good team leader: sharp, hard-working, compassionate. He guesses technically she is his boss, something that feels to Coulson more natural than it should.

“That’s not what this is about,” he says.

“Then what the hell, Coulson?”

Although he’s pretty sure a boss shouldn’t be using that language.

“I want to do more work from the base. Comms, support. Paperwork.”

“You hate paperwork.”

Coulson almost smiles. She is much more direct with him these days than she used to. Maybe it’s the confidence of being and being considered a leader, Maybe it’s that they have spent most of their working time (and otherwise, because there’s not much of the other) this past couple of years in each other's company. 

“I just don’t think I can be of much help in your team.”

“Oh?”

He can feel himself slipping into self-pity, and he fears Daisy can notice too.

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“I don’t. I just know you are indispensable for my team.”

He’s embarrassed about how much those words, even though they know they’re a lie, get to him, make him feel good. 

“That’s very sweet and very untrue.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Daisy says, her face full of terrible, threatening wrinkles. “You’ve never, ever, patronize me before. What’s going on?”

He could go with the truth. Sure, his wounded pride. But, as with so much in Coulson’s life since he met her, this is about Daisy. He takes a moment, and Daisy stares, trying not to look impatient. He can relate to that.

“I was about to go to sleep,” he says, pointing at his clothes, the t-shirt and sweatpants combinations he uses for pajamas.

He watches Daisy blush quite adorably, suddenly wrong-footed.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

“It’s okay.”

He looks at his left arm and then at Daisy. She understands and gestures for him to go on. Coulson disengages his prosthetic - an act that becomes more complex the more sophisticated the limb becomes. Daisy sort of stares, even though she’s seen this before; they’re teammates, they’ve shared safehouses and hotel rooms. He thought he would bothered him more, not having much to hide from her anymore. He thought it would make him feel naked, because it’s Daisy, but he was an idiot, _because it’s Daisy_ his secrets feel safer somehow, once she knows them. But taking off the prosthetic in her presence, tonight, also serves to make his point.

“I feel like I’m holding you back,” he admits. “On the field.”

“Why would you feel like that? Last week-”

“It was not just last week. Look at your team,” he says. “You have Inhumans. You have Mike Peterson. You even have Mack. I don’t fit.”

She drops the tablet on his desk. Her gaze softens again and he wonders how soft the eyes become. Daisy is the softest person he’s even known.

“Of course you fit.”

“You need people like… Thor on your team,” he says. She narrows her eyes at the idea. “Not some…” he smiles, gesturing. “Not some puny human.”

“You’re not some puny. you’re not.”

“Daisy, you’re heading to become the Director of SHIELD, this is the kind of choice you should already be making.”

“I know I’m heading there,” she agrees. “But absolutely this is the kind of choice _I_ should be making, not you.”

On the field she is almost unstoppable. She doesn’t need anyone, much less Coulson. This not the self-pity, he likes that she doesn’t need him. But she shouldn’t be keeping him in a team he is ill-equipped (okay, the choice of words _is_ self-pity) to be part of. Out of some misguided sense of loyalty. He wants to make things easier for Daisy, it’s all he had ever wanted.

Daisy touches his shoulder tentatively.

“I feel safer when you’re on the field with me.”

He snorts, and she draws away.. Daisy could split continents apart, if she wanted. What about him could make someone like her feel safer? All the times he failed to protect her, perhaps? Or is all the bad things which have happened to Daisy because of him, because he is in her life? Daisy can only possibly be joking here.

“Come on, Daisy, look at me,” he says, showing her his stump. He hasn’t told anyone he’s bothered by his arm in ages. “I’m not even one full agent.”

She makes a grimace at his language.

“That’s not what I see when I look at your arm,” she says, her voice very calm.

“Maybe it should be, you have to think about your team,” he reminds her. His head is still hurting from last week.

Daisy fixes him a hard gaze. Not an unkind one. He doubts Daisy is capable of _unkind_.

“When I look at your arm I remember someone who was willing to sacrifice his life to save people,” she tells him. “You’re someone who didn’t think twice about catching that crystal, even though it could kill you. That’s someone I want on the field with me.”

Coulson sighs, knowing he can’t win.

He reaches out and grabs her hand, grateful. He didn’t want to stop going on missions with her. The idea was breaking his heart, in fact. But they idea that he might be holding her back somehow… that was worse.

Daisy might not need him on the field with her, but she _wants_ there. That’s more important.

“Thank you,” he says, squeezing her hand.

Daisy brings her other hand to his cheek.

“...puny human,” she says. Coulson doesn’t catch the first word. Her voice is full of fondness. She leans over, her mouth right next to his, she repeats. “My puny human.”

She brushes her lips against his, very slowly, and then fast, kissing him deeply and passionately for one hot second.

When she pulls back Coulson blinks once, twice, hard, to make sure he’s seeing her clearly. He notices Daisy still has her hands cupping the sides of his face. The unexpected development - the association worries him, because he knows how far Daisy will go to keep people close to her.

“That is a really odd and unnecessary way of trying to keep me on the field,” he protests, stilling his voice as Daisy leans into him again, dropping her head for another kiss.

“It has nothing to do with it,” she says. Then she scrunches her face - to close to his that Coulson can practically feel Daisy’s skin wrinkling against his. It’s a weird and wonderful proximity. “Well, actually it has to do with it.”

He looks up at her eyes, questioning. It’s an awkward position - her standing, crouching over him sitting - but Coulson is not about to question any position Daisy chooses to do this.

“The reasons why I want you out there by my side,” she explains. “They are some of the same reasons why I want to kiss me.”

“You want to kiss me…” Coulson says, shamefully out loud, in his wonder. “You’ve already kissed me.”

She presses her nose against his cheek. “Yeah,” she says, voice low and coarse. “Can I do it again?”

Coulson finally moves, sliding his hands up her arms, feeling the practical unwelcoming touch of her mission suit.

“You can do that again… yes.”

 

**&**

Coulson helps her take off the gauntlets, not something she can easily do on her own. Trying to slow down, not rush this, is like trying to keep her powers under control, back when they were spilling from every pore of her body. She wants to drink in every detail of this, enjoy it, remember it.

“Please, Coulson.”

She is asking not to delay this moment. They should probably take it, slow, have more prologue. But she wants this, and Coulson - something in his eyes, something about the way he admitted his insecurity about being just human - _needs_ this, Daisy believes he does. To be shown his frailty is not a shortcoming, or a mistake. This is what she wants.

She pushes him on the bed. Now he’s naked, exposed. Daisy is not entirely naked. For now Daisy is happy with that imbalance. She wants to keep some things hidden, a little longer, if only for a night. She knows what it’s like, not being able to keep secrets from someone, no matter how hard you willed your brain to shut them out. Coulson would never force her to share herself with him. 

She draws the line of his scar, a reminder of vulnerability. He is easily breakable. If he knew how beautiful that idea seems to her. How beautiful he seems. She wears her vibrations around her, both armor and weapon. Coulson has seemed so heartbreakingly unattainable to her.

But he wasn’t. He’s right here. She can touch him.

She rides him slowly, so slowly that in the quiet of his bunk the world is reduced to the sound of his breathing, to her body around his cock.

“Tell me you want me,” she asks, breathlessly, bending down and kissing his neck. 

“I want you,” he says dutifully.

“Tell me you love me,” she says, weaker, almost begging - and she remembers begging Hive for his love, but this is different, this is real, and she chooses to beg, she begs knowing what the answer is.

Coulson tries to sit up. He gives Daisy a sad little smile.

“I love you,” he tells her.

She traces the lines of his mouth with her index, wanting to draw the words or catch them. She pushes the finger into Coulson’s mouth, past his teeth, and a second finger. He sucks at them, his body arching under her, towards her, as if jolted by a bolt of sudden pleasure.

He grabs her wrist and moves her hand away, or aside, pulling those two fingers out, his mouth seeking blindly. It finds her thumb, and Daisy hooks it into the inside of his mouth, Coulson sucking harder than before, his moans dying on her knuckles, head thrown back. Daisy watches the curve of his throat, watches his sensitive body change under her touch. 

Having this kind of power doesn’t scare Daisy.

+

Afterwards there is a moment of silence between them, which Daisy feels she must break, because Coulson is looking at her rather intensely, and while she loves it, there is only so much intensity she can take for one day. For now.

“Well, that wasn’t _puny_.”

Coulson chuckles. “Thank you.”

Silence again. It’s easier. They are still touching (they haven’t stopped touching at all). Her fingers scratch at the curve of his ass softly, and Coulson seems to like that, smiling in a way she swears he’s about to start purring every second now.

But he gets back to the intensity.

“I never thought someone like you could want me,” he says.

It’s the same voice with which he admitted he believed he was holding her back, and that he was too fragile to be by her side.

Insecurity in bed does not fit him. And Daisy hopes this is the last time she hears something like that.

She raises one eyebrow.

“I never thought someone _like you_ could want me,” she tells him.

He sighs, knowing he can’t win. He brings his hand to her shoulder, slowly sliding his fingers up to her neck, then her cheek, brushing his thumb across like he has to make sure she is there.

“You’re a strange woman, Daisy Johnson.”

She drops her head to the pillow, closing her eyes for a moment, shy, hopeful.

“Your kind of strange?” she asks.

Coulson grins.

“Definitely my kind of strange.”


End file.
